


A Simple Truth.

by orphan_account



Category: Glee
Genre: Boyfriends, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Feelings, Fluff and Angst, Love, M/M, Past Infidelity, Talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:36:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23949262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Set some time in season four. A difficult day in New York leads to a phone call between Kurt and Blaine and a continuation of their journey down the path of forgiveness.
Relationships: Blaine Anderson/Kurt Hummel
Comments: 8
Kudos: 52





	A Simple Truth.

From start to finish, Kurt’s day is awful-- wake up late, spill coffee all over his vintage white Alexander McQueen shirt, try not to strangle his exasperating coworker-- kind of awful.

He has a raging headache by the time he’s riding the crowded subway home, and his mood seems to be reflected in the brooding clouds that fog heavy and the biting wind that whips through the city air.

Living in New York City is akin to precariously balancing on a tightrope-- it isn’t often that Kurt loses his footing, but all it takes is one wrong twist of his ankle before he’s plummeting, drowning beneath the motion of the city that never ceases.

It’s days like these, after he’s arrived home to the comfort of their apartment-- though their heater is broken again, dammit-- that the longing begins to pull vertical in his chest, from the deepest center of his heart toward the tips of his toes, growing and growing until it feels like a physical presence beside him.

It’s unspecific, but fierce. A longing for familiarity, a shape of security that matches the cashmere sweater he throws on and the loose sweatpants that curve down his legs.

Because no matter how much he pretends that comfy clothing, warm pastries, silly movies and cuddles under blankets can heal over the chasm in his chest, the one that gapes wide and painful just behind his ribs-- he knows it can’t.

The sounds of the city are harsh outside his window, a little too steeled and a little too dissonant to be the music of his home. Rachel won’t be home for a few hours, and this is when it eats at Kurt-- the loneliness, the trivialness of his existence in such a massive, far-flung city.

He knows what he should do. He should call Adam, arrange a date night, pretend for just a few more hours that the company can fortify him against the chill outside that seeps through his pores.

But the familiarity, though he never intends for it to-- often times tries to purposely avoid it-- takes the formation of a person, an ache that burns from the roots of his bones.

Kurt supposes it’s unavoidable. The longing for comfort brings the memory of safety, and love spinning sweetly in his stomach, nights spent whispering foolish secrets and unfulfilled promises, tender like the inexperienced rock of their bodies, innocuous like the absentminded swipe of Blaine’s thumb over his forearm as they watched their favorite movies on summer nights that seemed infinite in their brevity.

And just behind it, the bitter mouthful of beautiful things broken and a hesitance that never existed before.

He doesn’t want to need him, and truthfully, he doesn’t. But he does want him.

It’s a tidal upsurge of anger-- why does it seem impossible to stop running back to him-- and the tempting solace of what’s always been certain. He knows Blaine will answer him if he calls.

But to give a part of himself back so easily feels like the unstitching of his flesh. He thinks it’s rather cruelly ironic that the grounding he desperately needs can only come from the one person who has untethered him like no other.

And he wishes he could say he doesn’t owe Blaine anything.

But he’s hurt him, too.

And is there not an ounce of comfort he could offer Blaine in return? Perhaps they could trade something at the same time, he could give back as much as he doesn’t want to take but needs like air to breathe.

Then maybe his footing wouldn’t feel founded on such a disadvantage. Like he exists for no greater purpose than to feed mindlessly off of Blaine’s love and endure the damage of his actions thoughtlessly in turn.

He battles with the thought for far longer than he cares to admit-- he wishes, purely for the confidence in his own self worth, that this could be dealt with in absolutes. Take Blaine and everything between them back with all of his soul, mind, and body, or be done with him completely.

But even before everything broke, the dimensions of their love were never that simplistic. Much of it they didn’t contemplate through the lens of their innocent and naive eyes, but he’s always loved and been loved by Blaine with a depth that was layered and complex and somewhat terrifying when he thought about it.

He didn’t often to the extent that he should have.

He does too often now, in retrospect of shattered trust.

And he doesn’t like to acknowledge it, but there’s a part of Kurt’s mind that keeps coming back to the notion-- that trust must still exist in some form, perhaps stronger than he previously accounted for or growing stronger now in the wake of their breakup, if his first instinct is to turn back to Blaine for comfort.

Because Blaine has said he won’t ever do it again, but Kurt can never truly know that he won’t.

But he still loves him enough, knows that he’s always loved Kurt enough, to believe that he wouldn’t.

And isn’t that trust in and of itself?

Except-- it’s the same thing he believed in before, too easily, too willingly, like he’s on the verge of slipping into now, with all of his heart and his love just to watch it splinter apart into a million jagged shards. All of his being and none of his control.

Blaine broke into a million pieces, and Kurt gashed and bled on every sharp edge.

And yet, there’s still blame he isn’t taking. Still things that Blaine deserves of him.

He can’t go back-- not yet, he doesn’t have enough of himself to offer, needs to rebuild what they both equally broke inside of himself first-- but he can spare enough of what he’s slowly constructing for their friendship.

He knows Blaine will meet him in the middle, with enough of his own barred vulnerability to make it feel like Kurt isn’t compromising himself with no return.

And he hates that, hates that it’s still that easy to know Blaine will be there for him, because he wants to be angry and hurt, has been for so long, and feels somewhat like he’s not respecting himself by setting aside those emotions, but he’s just so damn tired.

It’s back and forth, a tempestuous storm-- he wanted to hate Blaine but never has been able to, has always loved him in a way that used to thrill and now makes his head pulse with overwhelming confusion. He didn’t want to forgive him, but he aches with the desire to now, doesn’t want to hate him anymore but doesn’t know how to make all the delicate pieces fit within himself.

He has his phone in his hand before he can think about it too much-- and God does that make him laugh, because all he seems capable of doing anymore is thinking.

Thinking entirely too much. He needs a break from it all.

He doesn’t have to type out Blaine’s number or even pull up his contact. He still has him on speed dial, just the press of his thumb on a single button.

He tries not to think about how the break he’s searching for comes from the same center point source of all his tangled thoughts. It just makes his head pound harder.

He settles under his covers in a curled, fetal position, tucking his legs into himself and sinking into his pillows on his side. Some part of him just needs to feel small, and safe, and wrapped in a million different burnings of warmth, and he knows most of those won’t come from his comforter or the soft blanket he stole from Blaine’s room before he moved that he continues to sleep with.

“Hey.”

Blaine doesn’t waste time answering in a question. They both know who is speaking, and what a call between them means.

His voice is cozy, soft, and Kurt feels it unfurl down to the tips of his toes, to the goose bumps that pull and raise, tug at his scalp and the fine hairs of his arm.

“Blaine, hi.”

There’s a silence, where Kurt’s chest contracts tightly with a layer of something difficult to breathe through, something added to the air between them that never used to have a presence in their communication.

Things are easier between them now, have been for a while. But years away from what they once were.

Still, to hear his voice, to know he’s there, it’s unlike anything else Kurt has ever known, a feeling only Blaine has ever been able to place in his heart and deep into his chest and pouring through every outlet and orifice of his body. A kind of succor Kurt knows as soon as he’s reminded, every time, that he could never live without.

“Um… are you doing anything right now? I don’t mean to bother you.”

“No, not at all.” Blaine laughs, a squeaky, breath filled sound that is like a balm over every part of Kurt that spasms. “I was actually just about to start my homework, but… It’s good to hear from you. I’d rather talk.”

“I don’t want to distract you.”

In a perfect world, Kurt wouldn’t be so hesitant, would be much less considerate, would call and take what he needs and demand to be listened to because he’s broken and he’s been cheated and things have been _stolen from him_.

But in a perfect world, they wouldn’t be in this mess.

And maybe that’s precisely why they are. Because if they had truly understood before how imperfect they were, how imperfect the reality around them was, they wouldn’t have promised each other a forever to break.

And that’s why things have to be different now. The time and consideration that was expected before, that they both fell short of, has to be granted like sweet gifts. Full of meaning and deliberation.

And he wants to give that to Blaine.

And Blaine wants to give it back, so it would seem.

“Believe me, talking to you sounds much more appealing than the report on Alexander the Great that’s currently begging for my attention.”

Kurt can _hear_ Blaine’s eye roll.

“Mrs. McCormick still kicking your ass?” Kurt teases around a chuckle, and this is where they start, small insignificant things that are easy and mindless and still carry weight worth more than gold.

“Ugh, yes. I don’t know why she has it out for me.”

“She’s just jealous that a gay eighteen year old boy can pull off a pair of red chinos better than she can.”

It’s a compliment Kurt doesn’t mean to say so easily, but figures can’t hurt. He’s not trying to flirt his way back into Blaine’s life. It isn’t some competition of flattery that will win one of them over to the other. And Blaine knows that.

Blaine snorts. “That image is still burned into my brain, thank you very much.”

And it is exactly what Kurt anticipated, a comfort and relief that nothing from the city could provide him.

They talk around it, not about it, and somehow that’s easier and harder at the same time. Blaine tells him about the fiasco of glee club and Kurt fills him in on all the things he’s experiencing in the city, hole in the wall restaurants that have become his favorites and little coffee shops he’s discovered.

And on the one hand, they might be stalling an inevitable discussion, but on the other, it’s like Kurt is listening to all the little details he never gave his attention to before. The things that he glossed over and drove Blaine away with-- small things that _matter_ , because it’s Blaine’s life and it’s Blaine’s concerns and it isn’t a burden to listen, never has been when Kurt is willing to put in the effort.

Eventually, he breaches it. “Tell me how you’re doing.”

“I’m doing well,” Blaine answers without hesitation, but it’s smoothed with a little too much glib and no amount of time in the world could make him forget how to interpret Blaine’s voice.

“Blaine,” Kurt steadies, takes in a breath and closes his eyes. “How are you _actually_ doing?”

He doesn’t want Blaine’s guilt. Didn’t want it back in the fall and doesn’t have room for it now. But he does want his honesty, and his pain, and everything that that involves between them, even if it tears open his heart in the tenderest ways.

This trust has to grow both ways.

“...Kurt?”

Too much hesitance and somehow too much affection still laced in Blaine’s voice for Kurt to ignore.

“Blaine?”

“I don’t want to overwhelm you.”

“You don’t overwhelm me.”

“I did. Before.”

He did. Blaine has always overwhelmed him, for the majority in the most wonderful of ways that have left Kurt breathless and reeling and seen, visible, connected, heard and understood and cared for.

And other, less wonderful ways, ways Kurt didn’t know how to manage, but thinks they might be able to work on now.

“Just…” telling Blaine he loves him feels like too much to ask of himself right now. “You know that you matter to me right?”

“I do.”

“You won’t overwhelm me. I want to know.”

“I’m doing better,” Blaine sighs, and Kurt knows just by the sound of it that Blaine is finally speaking truth. “They, uh… I’m on medication? Antidepressants, you know.”

He’s mumbling, and it’s a delicate line, thin as the tip of a needle to find where Kurt’s heart lies. 

How much reassurance he can give without being reminded of the ways Blaine betrayed him, without becoming acutely aware of how cruelly young they both are and how he’s really in no position to offer advice.

But he can offer care, care that still flows from every cell in his body like a valve he can’t shut off. It’s powerful, the way the longing for the boy hundreds of miles away seems to override all the hurt until Kurt wants nothing more than to possess the ability to pull Blaine into his arms and assure him that everything will be okay, even though no one seemed willing to be that support for him when he so vitally needed it.

But then, Kurt knows some of it is the way he’s closed himself off. And Blaine, beautiful Blaine, is as open and accessible as ever. Just like he’s always been.

Well, except for…

The spirals of thoughts and feelings are endless, every one a different loop of emotion and every one _exhausting_ as they toss Kurt back and forth like a lifeless rag doll.

“That’s good,” Kurt responds, flinching at the reservation in his own voice. He doesn’t want Blaine to think he’s being disingenuous, not with a matter so vulnerable and intimate, but parts of Kurt’s guard aren’t certain of how they can come down around Blaine anymore. “Do they help?”

“Yeah. They do. It’s easier to get out of bed. Easier to find the energy to do little things, to take care of myself.”

And that is the reason why the love and the hurt can never be two, separate, compartmentalized things, why the intimacy and the heartbreak, the affection and the disloyalty, all come hand in hand in hand in hand.

Kurt can’t separate the boy who hurt him with the boy who loved him, because as much as he tries to pretend they’re two different people, they simply aren’t.

It’s all his Blaine. And his heart, in the most over simplistic terms, loves every part of Blaine, demons and angels alike.

“I want you to take care of yourself,” Kurt blurts out, emotions threadbare and strung right underneath the top layer of his flesh, where they’re visible to the world like thinly weaved veins of blood.

There’s a soft breath on Blaine’s end of the line before he says, “I am, sweetie.”

And Kurt doesn’t want to start wailing like a blubbering baby when Blaine whispers the endearment, but he does. The thoughts that first come to his mind are the same ones that have been there for months.

_How can you call me such lovely things when you were willing to do what you did? Hurt me like you have? How could you do this when you told me that you loved me?_

_When I still know that you love me?_

But those questions that used to eat at his stomach for hours, gnawing on his rotting innards in twisting knots, have faded to just a sharp jolt of pain, a flash of hurt that springs quickly then eases away, melts into the rush of comfort and relief he gets from hearing Blaine call him sweetie.

Blaine listens to him sob for a minute. “Kurt, are you okay?”

“No, no I’m not,” Kurt cries, and then he lets everything tumble out of him in a fit of vulnerability that doesn’t come often for him but is impossible to stop once he’s found his way to it’s center, and Blaine-- Blaine is always there, always some part of his most disclosed and vulnerable emotions, usually the cause or the recipient or the hand clasped tightly in his through the storm. 

Tonight, he’s all three.

“I’m tired,” Kurt whimpers, voice catching and seizing between his sobs in that way that seems nearly uncontrollable for a few seconds. “I’m so tired, and I-I’m lonely. I miss you. I really, really, really miss you, it hurts so fucking bad, Blaine. And I don’t want to be saying all this to you but I am because I love you and I don’t know how to stop.”

He doesn't want to stop.

“Oh, honey,” Blaine whispers, and Kurt doesn’t have to see him to know he’s crying, too, because Blaine always cries when other people do, and it’s so agonizingly heart breaking and also one of the things Kurt loves most about him. “Honey, it’s okay. It’s okay, Kurt, I’m here with you now. I’ll always be here with you. It’s okay.”

He doesn’t say I love you back. He doesn’t say he misses Kurt too.

And Kurt’s grateful he doesn’t, because it already feels too staggering to admit these things to Blaine and Kurt doesn’t have to hear Blaine speak them in response to know he feels the same way.

“I-I just want a hug.” Kurt’s voice trembles in a way he’s not proud of, but there’s no scores between them, not in this moment, no mask of bravery or confidence he needs to put on in front of Blaine to feel like he has some control.

At his deepest, most fundamental core, he’s broken and aching. And he doesn’t want Blaine out any longer. He wants him in.

“I wish I were there,” Blaine whispers, soft and utterly sincere. He sounds angry with himself for not being able to somehow teleport to New York. “I wish I could do that, give you a hug. Wish I could take you into my arms and hold you close and never, ever let you go.”

When Kurt continues to cry, Blaine continues to speak.

“You know what I would do?”

“W-what?”

“I would wrap you in that blanket you love, the Dalton one that you took from my room.” Blaine says it with a teasing lilt to his voice, a sparkling smile that Kurt can visualize, one he aches for so badly for a moment he thinks his body can’t physically handle it. “I would wrap it tight around you and I would let you lay on my chest, if you wanted that.”

“I want that.” Kurt’s voice crumples. “I want that. God, I just--”

He has to squeeze his hands tightly in fists that imprint his nails into his palm, tiny moon crescents that burn because he desperately needs the pain to be directed somewhere other than where it feels like it's choking him.

“I would play with your hair while you slept, and I would listen to the way you snore--”

“I do not snore,” Kurt interrupts, wiping the leaking mess of snot from his nose. It’s a little dumbfounding, having someone who still knows him so perfectly, who says all the things in a perfect combination of words and sound and tone that cradles his heart like nothing else, maybe because Blaine knows what Kurt needs, or maybe, just maybe, because Blaine himself is made for Kurt in a way he doesn’t even have to try to be.

“Sorry, sorry, I forgot we’re still pretending you don’t.”

“And we will keep pretending, Blaine Warbler.”

It’s so delicate between them, the nickname that Kurt never really stopped using after their Dalton days but began reserving for small, sweet moments between the two of them.

Blaine doesn’t speak for a moment, and when he does, his voice cracks with emotion he doesn’t try to hide. “Right. Then I would play with your hair and pretend not to listen to the way you snore.”

He doesn’t think his body is capable of it, and it’s almost as painful as it is joyous, but Kurt laughs, giggling and wet and squeaking.

“And… and I would let you lay there for as long as you needed, even if my legs fell asleep or I needed to use the bathroom. Because-- because I know that maybe you don’t want to hear it, but I love you, too, Kurt.”

Kurt pulls the phone away from his face, tosses it down the bed and curls around his squashed pillow as he sobs, convulses and weeps till it feels like he’s actually broken something inside his body with the intensity of it.

And Blaine-- Blaine doesn’t hang up, because when Kurt reaches back for his phone some minutes later, body trembling and disheveled, he’s still there, still breathing the rhythm Kurt’s heart beats and waiting for him.

“Blaine?” Kurt croaks, voice hoarse. He’s so completely defenseless in this moment, but Blaine is a safe haven and a refuge. 

“Yes?”

“Not now… maybe not for a while… but someday… I want that again. For us.”

It isn’t a promise, isn’t a vow, isn’t anything that either of them can commit to or break under the weight of.

It’s a simple truth, that they both already know, the _us_ that exists between them that could never be lived without for either of them.

He’s a long way from healed, still swollen and brittle around the edges.

But when Blaine’s response is simply, “I love you”, Kurt feels a continuation of the mending of his heart, and a remembrance of the reality that mistakes are made and trust is shattered and giving yourself to another person takes the courage of boundaries and the balm of time and the grace of forgiveness.

The willingness to acknowledge his own faults and recognize how he had a hand as instrumental as Blaine’s own in the way Blaine hurt him.

The willingness to make amends. The desire to rebuild trust and the patience to endure it.

And how, after everything, Kurt still loves Blaine.

And maybe that isn’t meant to be fought.

“Sing me to sleep?”

“Of course,” Blaine replies, and Kurt knows, as he settles down into his bed and closes his eyes, that Blaine’s affection and unadulterated love he gives so willingly outweighs the mass of the hurt he’s caused.

And for the first time, that doesn’t feel like Kurt’s excusing his heart ache or Blaine’s mistake.

But rather, that he’s learning what it means to forgive and move back towards wholeness.

**Author's Note:**

> <3


End file.
